Some things are easier said in the dark
by CharlieLee
Summary: Katherine gets her human happily ever after with the person she never expected.


**I don't even know where to start with this one, but I definitely enjoyed writing this couple. **

**Fair warning: Mentions of child abuse. **

**Please review. **

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"I don't know how to say it." He tells her.

"I know, Matt, there's no need to tell me." She says, her fingers laced with his. They're sitting back to back, in his childhood bedroom, not a light in the place. "I saw it all." She whispers, her voice hoarse.

"I want to tell someone." She nods, unable to speak, and she wonders when she became this sniveling mess. Somewhere in the seventeen years since she became _human, _since she became Katherine Donovan.

_Ugh, _even now, thirty six years old, and she still hates the way her heart flutters when she thinks of him.

They've been together for twelve years, married for ten, and with one _beautiful _daughter. Victoria Katrina Donovan is the apple of her father's eye, and her mothers. Of course, one is far more lenient than the other.

There'd been another- only the beginning they'd said, they wanted the family that neither of them had had, but Samuil Donovan had been born completely still, completely silent. Katherine still wonders if it's payback for every life she'd taken.

They decided not to try again, and to live out their days as a happy family, not one that's broken.

A year after they'd met again, purely by chance, he'd proposed, standing on the banks of the Thames, completely surprising Katherine. They'd married to following September, just the two of them there. They'd settled in England then, having fallen in love with the place, they considered it somewhere to start fresh.

Katherine became a primary school teacher, and Matt a mechanic.

Some days, Katherine wants to laugh at how manically, but completely beautifully human her life is.

They rarely speak of their past life, and hadn't planned on returning to Mystic Falls, until Matt heard that his childhood home was being sold, and insisted he needed to say one last goodbye to the place.

"I look at Vicki, Kat." He says, his voice weaker than she's ever heard it. A part of her wants to know if Elena has ever heard it like this. "And I feel sick." She says nothing, but squeezes his hand. "I don't understand, how anyone could do it."

"His name was Karl, a German I think. Mom was nuts about him-" He chokes back the rising vomit, remembering the first time that he saw him. 6'3, dirty blonde hair, steady jaw- '_Your new daddy' _is what she'd introduced him as. "and for a while he was cool. He bought us so much stuff, and paid our electricity bill. Hell, we even had a Christmas tree." Katherine smiles, thinking of a five year old Matt, wide eyed and excited. "I told him I loved him, Katherine." He tells her, and she doesn't need to look at him to know that he's crying.

"He-"

"Matt." She warns, because she _knows, _but she doesn't want to hear. It's selfish, it's cruel, but she can't.

"It was in this room." He whispers. "He came in, again, and again." She wants to steal her hand from his, she doesn't want to care. "Told me he loved me. He was the _first _person to tell me that." He starts to laugh. "Want to know what's worse?" He asks, and he can feel the weight lifting from his shoulders. "I _still feel it. _The appreciation, the want- the happiness. It hits me like a tidal wave in this room."

"I'm sorry."

"He- he abused me." She closes her eyes. "He took my childhood, Kat."

"I know."

"It's not fair."

"I know." She says it like a prayer.

"I cried." He tells her. "I cried for _days _when he left. How was anyone ever going to love me? And then Elena Gilbert came along-" She tries not to wince at the love laced throughout his voice. "And when she said she loved me, I vowed to never let her leave my side."  
"You got sort of close." She snaps, and he laughs.

"I got the next best thing." She sticks her elbow into his ribs, and he squeezes her hand a little too tight.

"Never told anyone?" She asks, her voice gentle, and kind, very un-Katherine.

"Not till now, not till you." He says, and Katherine almost smiles. She's glad, you know, not that she'll ever tell him. She's glad she's human, and that it's been years since they've seen or heard from Elena, or the Salvatores, or the originals. It all seems surreal to her now, but she knows that they watch them.

She's felt his eyes once or twice, and she smiles to let him know that she's happy, and well, and so _fantastically _human.

"Some things," She tells him, because Katherine has secrets of her own, secrets that she's vowed to take to the grave. "are easier said in the dark."


End file.
